High Risk by Chavi Eve Karkowsky

Author:Chavi Eve Karkowsky
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Liveright
Published: 2020-02-05T16:00:00+00:00

TODAY IS DIFFERENT.

Today, as I usually do before coming to the hospital on the weekend at the luxurious hour of 8:00 a.m., I sit in my pajamas with my hot cocoa and log on to the computer to see who is on the labor floor, to see what kind of day I have in store. But today, when I check, I see that in room 1 there is a woman, Clara Gimondi. She is there with a 32-week IUFD, admitted by the overnight doctor, Dr. Howard.

Clara was two months before her due date. She came in for a routine visit, without complaints, and there were no fetal sounds on the monitor, and then there was a still fetal heart, that nonmoving cloverleaf shape, on ultrasound. She is now there to have her labor induced. No preeclampsia, no bleeding; no obvious reason for now.

Sitting at home with my hot cocoa, I sit back, frozen in my chair, paralyzed by how much I don’t want to go to work. It’s not that it’s hard to take care of these women: it is, but I’ve prided myself on being really good at it. It’s not just that I can be kind or patient, though those skills are important. It’s more that I know that I’m not terribly important in that room; I’m a bit player in this large tragedy. I know how to go about my work of keeping a patient safe, of being available, but fading into the background. This is something I’m proud of, because it is an awful and difficult thing to be able to do.

But today is different for me, because I am 11 weeks pregnant with my first pregnancy. Things have been hard for me—infertility, emergent surgery, complications—and yet, so far, to my eternal surprise, I have not miscarried or bled to death or somehow managed to mess this up. Every chance I get, I check my stomach with the ultrasound; I am always surprised to see the small flicker of that living pregnancy.

As I brush my teeth in the early-morning dimness, I am reeling with how badly I want to stay out of this woman’s room. For my own pregnancy, I have worried about miscarriage, preterm labor, preeclampsia, delivering a previable infant, and genetic problems—all the things that OBGYNs are both privileged and doomed to see. And the worrying thus far has been protective, you see, because I’m doing okay so far.

But I forgot to worry about the pregnancy dying inside of me at 32 weeks, so Clara’s diagnosis catches me like a well-thrown punch. I know that IUFDs are not contagious; I know that. And yet. I am desperate to stay out of her room. I don’t want to have to look into her eyes, I don’t want to share her pain the way I usually do. In the end, I just want my happy pregnancy, my eventual healthy baby, and I don’t want to look at the other side.

As I put on scrubs and clip my pager to my belt and snap my ID onto my collar, I work myself out of it.

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